


Holly, Jolly

by ladivvinatravestia



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Accidental Marriage, Drunkenness, Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts, F/F, F/M, Fade to Black, Fluff, M/M, Multi, Pillow Fights, Ugly Holiday Sweaters, not canon-compliant with anything, oh no there was only one bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-04
Updated: 2019-01-04
Packaged: 2019-10-04 00:03:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17293847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladivvinatravestia/pseuds/ladivvinatravestia
Summary: No Yuletide dinner in the House of Odin is complete without __Ugly Holiday Sweaters___ and __An accidental marriage or two___.





	Holly, Jolly

**Author's Note:**

> Oops my pen slipped and I accidentally IronStrange all over the place.
> 
> Thanks to [Gavilan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gavilan/pseuds/Gavilan) and [Shynara51](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shynara51/pseuds/Shynara51) for being awesome betas!

“Please,” says Thor, all smiles, “it would be my honour to host all of my friends for Yule!”

“You’re sure we wouldn’t be imposing?” asks Tony.“On your family time and all that?”

Thor’s smile freezes momentarily.“No, no!” he says, recovering.“The more, the merrier!”

Tony mutters, “Anybody else think he’s inviting us to reduce the probability of family drama erupting into violence?”

Barnes snorts, Barton nods, and Rogers says, quellingly, “Tony - ” but then they’re all packing their duffels and rolling suitcases and heading up to the roof of Avengers Tower, except for Carol and Rhodey, who claim they need to stay behind to make sure that Earth is still protected in case of any Avenging-related emergencies while the team is away celebrating. 

Then Thor is herding them into a circle, raising his hammer, and calling out to Heimdall to summon the Bifrost, and they’re on their way to Asgard.Tony suspects Carol and Rhodey will wind up spending the entire time getting _reacquainted_ , but if any serious threats to Earth really do materialize while the Avengers are away, there’s always King T’Challa and his sister in Wakanda, and, if all else fails, the combined Pym-van Dyne-Lang crew out in California.

 ~~

The Avengers are met at the palace gates by Frigga, looking intimidatingly beautiful in a flowing blue gown.Trailing her are two cats, one older and dignified, seemingly all black until a ray of sunlight shows him to be a dark brown tabby; the other younger and more inquisitive, a long-haired white cat with patches of grey and brown tabby.Overhead, two ravens circle, calling out in their own language.

Frigga hugs each of her guests warmly, but just as Tony is about to ask when she is going to pinch their cheeks and comment on how much they’ve grown, he notices Loki, hovering in the background with a smirk and surrounded by -

“Not _those_ morons again!” he mutters, scowling at - what had that guy called himself again?Star-man?

“The _Guardians of the Galaxy_ ,” Strange corrects him, “helped save our lives and the universe on Titan, so -”

“Yeah, but now they’re on Loki’s side!” Tony hisses back.

“And Loki is on our side,” interrupts Strange, rolling his eyes.

“You say that _now_ ,” Tony retorts, crossing his arms.

Loki, catching the exchange if - hopefully - not the words, catches Tony’s eye and grins a grin full of very white teeth.

Loki nods coolly to Thor and says, “Brother,” and Thor responds, “Loki,” which seems civil enough until Tony notices they are eyeing each other like two cats vying for territory.Frigga leads the way into the palace, blissfully oblivious to her children’s rivalry.

Behind him, Tony hears Barnes saying, “This is more like the future I thought we’d be getting.”

He turns around to make a quip but cuts it short.Barnes and Rogers have stopped to gaze around at Asgard and at each other, impossibly fond, their fingers intertwined.What Tony wouldn’t give for a relationship like that.He’d thought he’d found it with Pepper, but things had never really been the same between them since the whole Ultron thing, and - he stumbles over something because he’s still walking backwards and Strange catches him by the arm to steady him, giving him an exasperated look.

 ~~

Inside, the palace is all high ceilings and shimmering gold, corridors branching in all directions.Frigga puts a hand on Strange’s and Wanda’s arms and says, “Come with me, I would speak to you of your magics.”

She sweeps off down one of the corridors, taking her cats and the two magic-users with her.Wanda looks back at Pietro, and Strange doesn’t look back at all, which makes Tony feel unaccountably irritated.

Dr. Foster and her assistant, Lewis, each take one of Thor’s hands - which, _what?_ \- and then Lewis says,

“C’mon, we’ll show the rest of you where you’re staying.”

They are led to a spacious room with high, frescoed ceilings, a bubbling hot pool in one corner, and something that Tony can only suppose is a communal bed, covered in pillows and coverlets.

“Red and gold,” he comments, “nice colour scheme!”

The group sets their luggage down and looks around the room, except for Barton, who flings himself onto the bed.

“Slumber party!” he exclaims.

Romanoff hits him in the face with a pillow, and from there it’s pandemonium.Barton grabs the pillow from Romanoff and throws it at Pietro, who ducks so that the pillow hits Wilson.Meanwhile, Pietro has grabbed a second pillow and is swinging it toward Tony, who is not so fast at ducking and ends up on the floor.Tony springs back to his feet and lunges towards the bed, intending to arm himself with his own pillow.Rogers just stands there with his hands on his hips, looking like he’s trying very hard to come up with some kind of command that will get the team back under control, at least until Barnes tackles him bodily to the floor, and then Barton and Romanoff and Wilson and Pietro are sitting on Rogers and walloping him with pillows while he struggles ineffectually (and, Tony thinks, not very strenuously) to get away from them.Tony feels suddenly left out, at least until Bruce hits him full in the face with a particularly fluffy pillow.

“Oh, it is _on_ ,” says Tony.

 ~~

Eventually, the pillow fight winds down in favour of Barton and Pietro jumping on the bed while Rogers, Barnes, and Bruce check out the hot pool and Romanoff fixes her hair, pretending she had never engaged in anything so inelegant and frivolous as a pillow fight.Soon, Wanda and Strange are rejoining them.

“So, learn any new spells?”Tony asks.

“Not the way you’d understand it, no,” says Strange, which, like everything else about him, is somehow simultaneously irritating and attractive.

But Wanda says, “Check it out,” and does something with her hands that produces multicoloured lights in a glittering arc, and Tony says,

“Yeah, that’s more like it.”

“She knew how to do that before!” hisses Pietro.

“Awww,” Barton complains.

Strange says, “I assume you’ve heard the saying that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic?”

Tony waves his hands in dismissal.“This is not - _science_ ,” he says.

“That’s what I thought, too, at first,” Strange replies. 

He starts to say more, but then Thor, Foster, and Lewis are coming back into the room, announcing that the feasting will begin soon, so they might want to get dressed in their holiday best.

In preparation for the trip, Tony got his hands on a bunch of ugly holiday sweaters - at a higher price than he expected, because on Earth it was August - so he hands the sweaters around: Hanukkah for Barnes, Lewis, and the Maximoffs, and Christmas for everyone else except Strange, who refuses to play along.

When they get to the great hall, Loki is wearing a female form, green gown with gold stripes on the sleeves.After seeing the Avengers in their ugly holiday sweaters, though, Loki’s form shimmers, and Loki reappears in a male form and Earth attire, black skinny jeans and a green sweater adorned with gold tinsel garlands, then winks at Tony and blows him a kiss.

Perched on either side of Odin’s shoulders on his throne are the two ravens Tony saw earlier, and the matching seat Tony assumes is Frigga’s is flanked by her two cats.

Thor, Foster, and Lewis go up to sit at the head table with Odin, Loki, Hela, and Heimdall while Frigga greets all of the Avengers with more hugs and says, looking at their holiday sweaters,

“Oh, don’t you all look so nice?It’s very good of you to wear the traditional dress of your people to our feast; we do so love to see the customs of other lands.Stephen, dear, you don’t partake of this tradition?”

Tony tries to shoot an “I told you so” look at Strange, but he merely draws himself up to his considerable height, sniffs, and says, “Our lands have many different customs, ma’am.”The Cloak of Levitation flares out around him in agreement.

 ~~

Frigga seats the Avengers with the Guardians of the Galaxy at a side table nobody is going to convince Tony not to think of as the Kids’ Table, even though there are also several other side tables, all occupied by Asgardians of all ages.Dinner consists of a really astonishing variety of roast meats, no apparent vegetables at all, and an overwhelming amount of alcohol.Given Tony’s complicated past relationship with booze, he decides not to drink at all, and most of the Avengers seem to be with him on that, but it seems that drinking is a competitive sport on Asgard and that Barton, Wilson, and the Maximoffs have decided to form the Avengers’ side on the drinking team.

Seating is haphazard and Tony finds himself next to Rogers and Barnes on one side and the Guardians’ - _talking - raccoon?_ \- on the other side.It’s fine until Barnes and the raccoon - Rocket, Tony gathers - start animatedly discussing guns across both Tony and Steve.Steve looks at Tony.Tony looks at Steve.

“Should we switch seats?” Steve suggests.

Tony agrees hastily and then they’re both standing up, Rogers ushering Barnes into the seat next to Rocket.Barnes moves over without stopping for breath in his comparison of the McMillan TAC-50 and the SAKO TRG 42.It’s then that Tony realizes the switch has put him next to Doctor Strange.

Shit, he was really trying to avoid this.They can’t seem tohave any kind of normal conversation with each other when the fate of the universe isn’t hanging in the balance, but empty small talk doesn’t work, either.If Tony hadn’t seen Strange’s brand of magic in action he would have trouble believing that it was even possible; Strange seems to think Tony’s point of view on the existence of magic is childishly limited but enigmatically won’t explain any further about how, exactly, he harnesses his powers from the cosmos.And does he have any interests at all besides being a wizard?Tony thinks he used to be some kind of surgeon, but since biosciences were never really Tony’s thing, he doesn’t have a lot of topics of conversation to offer there, either.As he’s mulling his opening conversational gambit, he becomes aware that Strange hasn’t even registered the switch in seating arrangements yet; he’s too busy discussing popular music of the 70s and 80s with Star-man? Star-prince?Quill.Hey, something Tony actually _can_ talk about!

“I don’t care what people say about Queen, Bowie’s _Never Let Me Down_ was the shit,” says Tony.

“Oh yeah, it definitely deserved a better reception than the critics gave it,” agrees Strange, and from there it turns out maybe the two of them do have something to talk about about that doesn’t involve them casting aspersions on each other’s preferred methods of fighting supervillains. 

 ~~

Odin’s Hall is hung throughout with evergreen boughs and pine cones and the heady scent of spiced mead hangs in the air, and there is a single sprig of mistletoe hanging down on a red ribbon from the rafters in the centre of the hall.After what seems like about four hours of continuous feasting, accompanied by declamations from a rotating cast of speakers of the history, lineage, and deeds of various people in the hall, couples, threesomes, and moresomes start to trickle out towards the mistletoe, hand in hand, where they kiss to cheers and congratulations from the crowd.

“You’d think there would be more than one sprig of mistletoe floating around for a gathering as big as this,” comments Steve.

“You going to go kiss your man?” Tony asks him.

“No, I can do that at home,” Steve replies.He casts a glance over to where Barnes is arm-wrestling Drax.Tony has to admit, it’s an activity that doesn’t make him look particularly kissable. Barton, Rocket, and Groot are playing some version of mumblety-peg.Rocket appears to be winning, at least until Pietro speeds up out of nowhere and says,

“Oh, that’s very nice for a non-enhanced life form,” and grabs the knife right out of Rocket’s paw.

“I’m enhanced!” argues Rocket.

Tony reminds himself that this is not his problem.He turns back to Steve, who also deserves a night off from stuff like this being his problem.

“Come on, you have to!It’s Yuletide!” Tony urges.

Steve gets a calculating look on his face.“I will kiss Bucky under the mistletoe,” he begins, “if you kiss -”

“ _Do not_ ,” hisses Tony and, oh shit.It’s not just that he thinks Strange is attractive, he has actually somehow developed a full-blown crush on the guy.Things were so much easier when Tony didn’t care what other people thought about him.Now he can’t just drag Strange off into a darkened corner and shove his tongue down his throat, he needs to make sure that they actually get along with each other as people first.Or, since he is a grown adult, he could take the mature route and just never speak of his crush to anybody so it’s nobody’s problem except his own.

Then out of the corner of his eye, Tony sees Loki leaning over to say something to Odin, and Odin is gesturing to Tony and Strange, specifically, and motioning for them to approach the high table.Tony turns away from Steve to trade glances with Strange, who shrugs eloquently and beckons for Tony to go first.

“What do you think he wants?” asks Tony.

“No idea,” says Strange.

“Oh come on, you talked to Frigga earlier, that practically makes you BFFs,” says Tony.

“We had a very formal audience with her,” Strange replies, “which does not give me any greater insight into her or Odin’s motives than you have, but I remind you that we are guests here and -”

Tony cuts him off.“Yeah, yeah, when in Rome and all that,” he says.

“Yes, exactly,” says Strange.

As they near the middle of the hall, Barton and Wilson, both the worse for drink, shout out,

“You have to go under the mistletoe!”

Well, Tony and Strange did just agree (didn’t they?) that they should try to follow the customs of their hosts, and there have been Asgardians kissing on this spot already tonight.Tony slows to grab Strange by the arm so he can manoeuvre him under the mistletoe.Sure, he might just have told himself he was going to keep his feelings to himself, but if this is the one chance he’s ever going to get to act on his stupid crush, he has to at least take advantage of the situation.And now that he’s properly processed how he’s been feeling about Strange since he first materialized in Central Park all those months ago, Tony understands that all he really wants to do is kiss that smug look off Strange’s face.

He’s reaching up to grab Strange by the collar - goddamn, why does the man have to be so tall?! - and only barely registers Thor at the high table shouting,

“No, don’t!” at the same time as Loki leans forward with a blinding smile, saying,

“Yes, do!”

 ~~

Several things happen at once.Strange proves much less averse to being kissed, with tongue, than Tony might have expected.Odin, Frigga, and other Asgardians throughout the hall are coming to their feet, raising their flagons and drinking horns in a toast, and shouting something that Tony thinks might be,

“Witnessed!”

And Thor is stalking towards Loki, a murderous expression on his features, then punching his sibling full in the face.

“Yeeaahhhh!” cheer Wilson, Pietro, and Bruce.Tony’s not sure if they’re cheering for the Loki-punching, which, fine, or for the mistletoe-kissing, which, wait, they’re supposed to be on Tony’s side!

Odin spares a pained glance for his squabbling offspring, then sits down to return to his dinner.One of the ravens squawks.

Frigga says something to Thor and Loki, still pummelling each other, that looks like, “Now, children, behave,” before gliding gracefully around the end of the high table and coming toward Tony and Stephen in the middle of the hall, followed by her cats.

“Anthony, Stephen,” she says, putting her hands on Tony’s and Strange’s arms, “I am _most_ honoured that you have chosen to bind yourselves to each other according to our customs.”

“What?!” Tony tries to ask.It comes out as a squeak.

“Madam, there must be some mistake,” says Strange, sounding much calmer than Tony feels.

Tony casts an eye over to the Kids’ Table, but if he’s hoping for some kind of extraction plan, he’s sorely disappointed.Steve gives him two thumbs up, and Wanda does something with her hands that causes red sparkly hearts to float through the air.

“Oh, but Loki assured me that Thor had explained that kissing under the mistletoe binds the parties to each other in marriage for a year and a day,” Frigga begins, then looks over to where Thor is now holding Loki up to a wall by the neck, hissing dire imprecations at his sibling.“Oh dear,” Frigga adds.“Perhaps not.But what a wonderful, romantic way for your people to bridge the artificial dichotomy you create between science and magic!”

Strange draws breath to, Tony hopes, make some kind of objection, but maybe he doesn’t feel quite equal to arguing with the All-Mother, because he doesn’t actually say anything.

Tony tries to signal to Rogers that he needs actual help, here, please, but Rogers is now actually kissing Barnes, and the only person who notices Tony’s frantic gesticulations is Wilson, who downs his drink before weaving unsteadily towards the centre of the hall.

“I was wondering when you two would get your heads out of your asses and kiss each other,” he says, articulating with exaggerated care so he won’t slur.“Well done!”

And he slaps Tony on the back, or tries to but misses.

“Stephen and Anthony are now wedded according to our custom for a year and a day,” announces Frigga, smiling benevolently, before gliding regally back towards the high table. 

Wilson cackles and hooks an arm around Tony’s and Strange’s shoulders to steer them back toward the Kids’ Table.“Even better!” he grins.

The older cat fixes Tony with a gimlet-eyed stare.

“Meow,” he opines.Shit.Even the cat is judging him.

The younger cat winds himself around Tony’s and Strange’s legs before both cats follow their mistress back to the high table.

“Look, no, there has to be some kind of way out of this, or something,” Tony tries.“We didn’t know what we were doing!We didn’t have any intention of getting married, or anything!Loki tricked us!”

“Stark,” sighs Strange, “we’re only here for one night.Let’s just smile and play nice, and we’ll sort it all out once we get back to Earth.”

 ~~

After Wilson announces to the collected Avengers and Guardians that kissing under the mistletoe creates an actual marriage, there is a sudden increase in impromptu marriages among Thor and Loki’s guests.First, Rogers and Barnes exchange knowing looks and head out to the spot under the mistletoe, which Tony now notices is located right above the centre of something that looks like a depiction of the Asgardian solar system.Rogers grabs Barnes around the waist and drops him into a dramatic dip before kissing him with obvious passion and intent.They grin at each other as they link hands and walk back to the Kids’ Table.By this time, Thor and Loki appear to have resolved their differences, because they both join in the toast to the new husbands.

Then a determined-looking Nebula is leading out a giddy-looking Mantis, and they, too, kiss under the mistletoe and earn a witnessing toast.Things subside for a while after that, but while Tony is busy trying _not_ to make eye contact with or stand anywhere near his new husband ( _oh shit_ ), he notices Nebula, still holding Mantis’ hand, in an intense conversation with Gamora.Gamora looks first stubborn, then displeased, and finally resigned, before she holds her hand out to Quill to lead him toward the mistletoe.

 ~~

And of course, because nothing can possibly be simple or easy in Tony’s life, Strange’s prediction that the whole situation could be easily ignored and later reversed does not, in fact, come true.

Thor, Foster, and Lewis come to collect the Avengers at the end of the feast, while Loki leads the Guardians off in a different direction, but instead of stopping when they’ve ushered everybody back to the room they were initially assigned, Lewis announces with a smirk that each of the two newly-married couples will be getting separate rooms.Since Steve and Barnes have been together for eighty-seven actual years at this point, this announcement means that Tony and Strange are on the receiving end of most of the ribaldry.

Or, well, Tony is on the receiving end of most of the ribaldry.It seems like only Wanda feels she knows Strange well enough to give him a hard time, and it looks like this consists mostly of her straightening his cloak collar, smoothing his hair back, and patting him on the cheek. 

Barton ambles up to Tony and throws an arm unsteadily around his shoulders.

“This is going to be the most beautiful night of your life,” he informs Tony seriously.

Wilson takes Tony by the shoulders, looks him in the eyes, and says, “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”Since Tony has never known Wilson to even go on a date, he’s not sure what this admonishment does and does not rule out.

Barnes comes up to Tony with a smile that promises no good, presses a bottle of lube into his hands, and starts, “Now Tony, when two men love each other _very much,_ they give each other a special kind of hug -”

“Fuck off, Barnes,” Tony interrupts, but he takes the lube anyway.Now if he just had some condoms - but no, that’s ridiculous, there’s no way they’re going to progress that far tonight, even if they are technically married now.

In the end it looks like he wasn’t exactly right about Wanda being the only one willing to talk to Strange - when he looks over, Rogers appears to be giving him some form of the “If you hurt him,” speech, so that’s nice.

But anyway, nothing is going to happen, because this is just a stupid situation that Loki tricked them into, and all they have to do is share a room overnight, probably with a bed as big as this one, and then they can go back to Earth and forget about all of it, and there’s no way Strange feels the same way about Tony, or even wants to talk to him after Tony got them into this stupid predicament.But when Tony sneaks a glance at him, Strange looks less displeased about the situation than Tony might have assumed.

Then all the newlyweds are following Thor and Foster and Lewis out of the big guest bedroom, and Lewis is showing Rogers and Barnes to a room on one side of the corridor and Foster is showing Tony and Strange to a room on the other side.

She says, “When Thor and I first met, I had trouble getting a handle on what he meant about science and magic being one and the same -”

“They’re _not_!” interrupts Tony.

“Stark,” says Strange.

“Go on,” says Foster, smiling indulgently.“You can start by calling each other by your first names.You’ll figure it out.Maybe you’ll even consummate your marriage!”

Then she’s pushing them into the room and shutting the door behind them and yes, the bed is just as big as it was in the group guest-room, but he’s still in here all by himself with a man who makes him tongue-tied and who is now regarding him, arms crossed, but with an amused expression on his face.

“Well?”says Strange expectantly.“Husband?”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Actual conversations I had while researching this fic:
> 
> Me: did the pre-Christian Norse have any midwinter celebrations, what were they like  
> Informant #1: mostly they just stayed inside and were afraid of going outside because there were draugr out there.  
> Me: okay Norse zombies are awesome, but that is NOT what this fic is about
> 
> Me: did the pre-Christian Norse have any midwinter celebrations, what were they like  
> Informant #2: yeah they ate and drank a lot and then there’s the part where Loki ties his balls to a goat’s beard to make a giantess laugh.  
> Me: whaaaattttt
> 
> Me: did the pre-Christian Norse have any midwinter celebrations, what were they like  
> Me: I do not need to hear about Loki tying his balls to a goat  
> Informant #3: Your limits to our conversations will lead to stunted growth.
> 
> visit me on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/ladivvinatravestia)


End file.
